Washington's Budget Betrays the American People - Granite Grok

Washington’s Budget Betrays the American People

Washington Democrats and Republicans just passed a budget that rewards the special interests at the expense of the American people.  Senators Ayotte and Shaheen and Congresswoman Kuster voted for the special interests.  Congresswoman Shea-Porter voted for the people over the special interests.

The budget was created by the political party establishments, including President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and Majority Leader Reid, and special interest groups.  The 1600 plus page document is heavy with pork, favors for supporters, and support for wasteful, ineffective, and unpopular programs.

In an unbelievable act of betrayal of the American people, this budget puts taxpayers back on the hook for potentially trillions of dollars of losses incurred by the big banks.  Congress repealed the Dodd-Frank provision that prevented banks from gambling with taxpayer insured money, a factor in the 2008 financial meltdown.

This budget deal denied the recently elected Senators and Congressmen the opportunity to start fixing the problems, created by current and previous Congresses, that the voters sent them to address.

Among other things the budget deal fully funds Obamacare (through September), funds President Obama’s amnesty for illegal aliens (through February), increases the power of political parties over the people, over-rides Washington DC voters related to marijuana, bails-out Blue Cross Blue Shield, provides corporate welfare via OPIC, it freezes Vice-President Biden’s salary, forces the Postal Service to deliver mail on Saturday, demands that nutrition assistance programs include white potatoes (everyone knows how essential they are!), it blocks a rule that truckers get more sleep before driving, blocks funding for sprucing up UN buildings (a token for the people), provides money for livestock killed by wolves, approves increased NSA spying on Americans, etc.

One would think that some of these things could have been handled normally by Congress rather than crammed into this last-minute bill in the middle of the night.  One wonders how many more items, important or trivial, good or bad, were slipped into this bill that not a single Senator or Congressman read before voting?

About 40% of the Republicans (led by the TEA Party members, showing why they are attacked by the party establishments) and about 40% of the Democrats voted for the people, not the special interests.

BTW, the Washington Post says the politicians supporting this pro-special interest bill received, on average, twice the amount of donations from the finance/insurance/real estate industries as the politicians opposing it (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/12/democrats-who-voted-for-the-spending-bill-have-received-twice-as-much-money-from-the-finance-industry-as-the-no-voters/).

The passage of this budget deal is further proof that the majority of the Washington politicians of both political parties don’t care what the people want or what’s best for the vast majority of Americans if those things are contrary to special interests wants.

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